Newcomer, page 21
Kaga bent down and plucked the still-spinning top off the floor.
“You were out?” he asked, strolling back to the sofa and putting the top back on the table. He wasn’t holding string.
“Yes, seeing a friend. I haven’t yet had time to change. I only just got back.”
“Really? You did your shopping after seeing your friend, then?’
“Huh?”
“I saw you with a whole armful of shopping bags.”
Kaga sat down and picked up his glass of tea.
So the detective hadn’t just happened to drop by. He’d been lurking nearby, waiting for her to return. He’d said it was “nothing terribly major.” But was he telling the truth? Reiko felt herself growing tense.
“Where did you go shopping?”
“Ginza.”
“Do you ever go to Nihonbashi?”
“Occasionally. Mitsubishi Department Store is around there.”
“How long does it take to get there by taxi?”
“Nihonbashi? Probably about … uhm … fifteen minutes.”
“Gosh, this is such a convenient place to live.”
Although the apartment wasn’t all that close to the local subway station, you could get to Ginza or Nihonbashi in no time by cab. That was the reason Reiko had chosen this particular neighborhood.
“Excuse me, Detective, but why are you here today?”
Kaga put down his tea and sat upright on the sofa.
“I want to ask you about June the tenth. Can you talk me through the whole thing again?”
“The whole thing? I don’t think there’s anything more I can tell you.”
“Yosaku Kishida, your father-in-law, came by to discuss the arrangements for the anniversary of his wife’s death. Was that an urgent matter?”
Reiko tilted her head to one side and exhaled through her teeth. “I’m probably not the best person to ask about that. The anniversary is still two months away, so my husband was pretty relaxed about it. My father-in-law seemed to be taking it more seriously.”
Reiko herself couldn’t have cared less.
“So they discussed that. Then what?”
“I wouldn’t say they discussed it. It was more like they agreed to start thinking about what to do.”
“Is that all? Hardly seems worth getting together in the first place.”
“I suppose not,” murmured Reiko.
She frowned and peered at the detective.
“Anyway, why are you asking me about this? Does it really matter what they discussed? Is it a problem?”
“No, it’s not.”
“What the heck are you investigating here anyway? How is my father-in-law involved? Come on, tell me. I won’t say another word until you do. I’m under no obligation to talk to you.”
There was an edge to Reiko’s voice. If it came to a shouting match, she was confident of winning.
Kaga scowled, then gave an emphatic nod.
“I guess you’re right. The least I can do is to tell you the nature of the crime we’re investigating.”
“It’s some sort of corporate accounting fraud, right?”
“Wrong. This is a murder inquiry.”
“What!”
Reiko’s eyebrows shot up. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear.
“On the evening of June the tenth, a murder was committed. We haven’t yet identified the perpetrator. We are currently checking the alibis of everyone associated with the case. Yosaku Kishida is one of those people. When we interviewed him, he told us that he was here that night. I’m here to confirm that.”
Reiko had been holding her breath. Her heart was still pounding like a jackhammer even after she released the air from her lungs.
“Is that what this is all about? My father-in-law didn’t say anything about a—”
“He probably didn’t want you to worry. You’d be alarmed if you heard that he was involved in a murder case. And naturally so.”
“You’re not kidding. My heart’s racing.” Reiko looked at the detective.
“Anyway, if that’s what this is really about, let me make myself as clear as possible. My father-in-law came here. He arrived at about eight and left a little after half past nine. I’ve no idea what he did after that, though.…”
Kaga smiled.
“Mr. Kishida told us that, after leaving here, he went to a bar in Shinbashi and drank there until late that night. We’ve confirmed that.”
“I’m glad to hear it. So his alibi holds up.” Reiko felt a sudden twinge of doubt in her chest, and her face clouded over. “But I’ve watched my fair share of crime shows on TV. No one ever believes the family members.”
“I wouldn’t say no one believes them,” replied Kaga, with a rueful grin. “More that as evidence, it carries somewhat less weight. There’s always a chance that family members are covering for one another.”
Reiko now understood why Kaga was being so persistent in his questions about June the tenth. He thought she might be lying. If she and her father-in-law were coordinating their stories, then the more questions he asked, the more likely she was to slip up.
“Trust me, Detective Kaga. My father-in-law was here in this apartment on that night. That’s the God’s own truth.”
Reiko spoke passionately. What would the neighbors think if they heard that her father-in-law was a suspect in a murder? Would little Shota get bullied at school?
“The best thing would be if you could somehow prove that to me,” said Kaga.
“Prove it?” Reiko cast her mind back to the evening of June the tenth. There had to be a way of proving that Yosaku really had been here.
“You told me that Mr. Kishida brought this with him on the twelfth?” said Kaga. He was holding up the top, which was decorated with a pattern of green and yellow circles. “What I can’t figure out is why he didn’t bring it on the tenth, if he came then anyway.”
The question seemed reasonable enough. It would be a disaster if the top ended up serving as proof that Yosaku hadn’t been there on the tenth. Reiko could feel the panic mounting.
“No. You’re right. He actually did bring it with him on the tenth.”
“On the tenth? But you said the twelfth the other day.”
Reiko shook her head.
“No, he brought it with him on the tenth. The thing was, he’d forgotten the string.”
“He forgot the string?”
“Because he’d left the string behind, at first my father-in-law didn’t mention that he had the top with him. Then Shota—my son—opened up his granddad’s briefcase and found it there. When I asked my father-in-law what on earth he was doing with a spinning top, he explained that he’d been given it by a friend.”
“And he brought it here, intending to give it to his grandson as a present, until he realized he’d mislaid the string—is that it?”
“Yes, that’s right. He thought he’d left it on his office desk. He took the top with him, promising to bring it back with the string as soon as he could.”
“So he brought the top back with him—this time with the string—on the twelfth of June?”
“Precisely. Shota was really excited about his new toy, so I pestered my father-in-law to bring it back soon.”
“I see,” Kaga agreed. “I think I understand.”
“Detective Kaga, you’ve got to believe me. My father-in-law was here with us on the evening of the tenth.”
Reiko was looking at the detective with desperation in her eyes. Why anyone would suspect her father-in-law she didn’t know, but he had a proper alibi, and she was determined to get that point across.
Kaga smiled gently.
“I believe that you’re telling the truth. Your account is extremely convincing. In fact, thanks to you, everything now fits into place.”
“Really?” Amid her relief, Reiko felt a slight shadow of anxiety. What exactly had she said that had been so “convincing”? What exactly “now fit into place”?
Kaga got to his feet and thanked her for her help.
He slipped his shoes back on just inside the front door then put a hand into his pocket.
“I forgot this. Give it to your son. He’ll be better off with this.”
Kaga was holding out a length of string. A little thinner than the string her father-in-law given them, it was twisted like rope.
“Tops need the right kind of string to work properly. You’ll have much better luck with your top if you use this string.”
Kaga opened the door, stepped into the hallway, then turned back to Reiko.
“There’s one thing I forgot to mention: the place and time that the murder was committed. The place was Kodenmacho in Nihonbashi, and we estimate the time as sometime between seven and eight that evening.”
“Nihonbashi between seven and eight?” Reiko repeated quietly to herself, then started. So her testimony about her father-in-law visiting them here at eight o’clock wasn’t an alibi after all.
What, then, had Kaga really come to check up on? She tried to ask him, but he said goodbye and pulled the door shut behind him.
5.
It began drizzling. It was the kind of rain that soaks you through before you know it—and a sure sign that the rainy season was just around the corner. Tooru Sagawa stepped outside and pulled the awning out farther before pushing the articles on the display a little closer to the front of the shop. The items were mostly old-fashioned wooden toys: building blocks, cup-and-ball games, and stacked Daruma dolls. As the shop was quite close to the Suitengu Shrine, many parents of newborn babies walked this way. Sagawa made a point of displaying things outside that would appeal to them. At the same time, he never put things that might appeal to elementary and middle school children in the street, as they would just steal anything that caught their eye. He once put a line of cute toy sets out in the street, only to have the damn kids steal the most popular ones and leave him with lots of incomplete sets. It wasn’t a happy memory.
Sagawa was checking out the overcast sky, when he noticed someone approaching. It was a man in a white shirt. Sagawa had met him once before. The man’s name was Kaga, and he was a detective who’d recently been transferred to Nihonbashi Precinct.
“It’s started raining,” said Kaga, holding his hand out palm-upward.
“The rainy season will be upon us any day now. It’s a bad time for business; still, I suppose it brings us a step closer to the busiest season.”
These days you barely saw any children in Ningyocho. Once the schools broke up for summer vacation, however, children would pour in from somewhere and cluster outside Sagawa’s shop. He needed to get a move on and order fireworks in time for the summer rush. He’d been running his toy shop for twenty years, give or take, and had a pretty good idea of what sold when.
Kaga was examining the wooden toys. A group of spinning tops decorated with concentric green and yellow circles seemed to have caught his attention.
“That reminds me, did you sort out that business of the spinning tops you asked me about the other day?” inquired Sagawa.
Kaga smiled and nodded.
“I think I’m about to. You were right: they had tops at Hozukiya, too.”
“What did I tell you? Everything there is of very high quality. I pop around from time to time just to take a look.”
The last time Kaga came by, he’d asked Sagawa about his spinning tops. His first question: had he had sold any recently?
“Sold any? No. Lost any to pilfering? Yes,” Sagawa had replied. That aroused the detective’s interest. He asked when the shoplifting had occurred.
June tenth, Sagawa told him. Sagawa inventoried all the items in his shop on a daily basis. That’s how he knew that one of the tops outside the store had been lifted.
The detective had then bought a top and unwound the string from it right in front of him. After taking a good hard look, he’d muttered something about it being the twisted variety of string. Few people knew the terminology, so Sagawa was surprised.
Kaga then asked him if he knew any other local shops that sold wooden tops. The only place that occurred to him was Hozukiya. Kaga must have gone straight there after Sagawa told him about it.
“How come you don’t ask me any questions?”
“Questions about what?”
“About the investigation I’m working on,” Kaga replied. “It’s usually the first thing people ask me when I make inquiries. ‘What’s happened? What are you investigating?’”
Sagawa chuckled.
“What good would it do anyone to tell an amateur like me? If a detective’s on the case, something nasty must have happened. Learning more about it will just make me depressed.”
“I wish more people felt like you,” said Kaga.
Sagawa picked up a spinning top.
“A toy store is in the business of selling dreams, so I need to maintain a positive, fun frame of mind. I go out of my way not to hear any negative news. Still, I would like to ask you one thing. What connects the top that was stolen from here to your case? I’m not asking you to go into detail. Did it play a positive part in the case or not—that’s all I want to know.”
Kaga lapsed into a brief, thoughtful silence, then shook his head.
“Let’s not go there. It’s confidential.”
“Okay. No big surprise. Forget about it, then. Good luck with the case.”
“I’ll be seeing you,” said the detective as he wandered off into the rain.
9
THE DETECTIVE OF NIHONBASHI
1.
From his very first glimpse of the crime scene, Hiroshi Uesugi knew that this case wasn’t going to be easy. There was no specific reason for him to feel that way; if he’d had to put it into words, he’d have said something about the killer having luck on his side.
At eight p.m. on June 10 a woman’s body was found in a Kodenmacho apartment. The person who discovered it was a friend who’d dropped by for a visit.
Based on the state of the body, death was estimated to have occurred within the last two hours. The friend had originally planned to get there one hour earlier, at seven. Had she not rescheduled at the last minute, she might have walked in when the crime was under way, or at least caught sight of the perpetrator. That was what made Uesugi feel that the murderer was lucky.
An investigation task force was set up in Nihonbashi Precinct, in whose jurisdiction the murder had been committed. It was there that Uesugi met the detective who’d been first on the scene. His name was Kaga, and he’d just been transferred to Nihonbashi.
Uesugi was familiar with the name. Stories were making the rounds about the various homicides Kaga had solved. Rumor had it that he was also a onetime all-Japan kendo champion.
Something of the athlete was still visible in Kaga’s lean, hard physique, but the laid-back expression on his face hardly radiated professional competence. Uesugi also took an instant aversion to his sloppy way of dressing: a short-sleeved shirt worn over a T-shirt.
“Hey, Kaga, you always dress like that on the job?” was the first thing Uesugi said to him.
“Not always, but most of the time,” Kaga breezily replied. “Lately it’s been so damn hot.”
The guy’s a jerk, Uesugi thought. It was a letdown after all the stories he’d heard about Kaga and his razor-sharp mind and bloodhound nature. When had he lost it? Perhaps the rumors had exaggerated his skills out of all proportion. When you got down to it, if the guy was that good, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police would have plucked him out of a precinct posting long ago.
It didn’t take long to build a profile of the murder victim. Her name was Mineko Mitsui. Divorced about six months ago, she lived alone and worked as a translator. The friend who found her was in the same business.
The day after the body was found, the captain ordered Uesugi to take a junior TMPD detective with him and go to see the ex-husband of the victim, a Mr. Naohiro Kiyose.
When they broke the news of his former wife’s death to Kiyose, he seemed unable to process it. He just sat there with a bewildered look, providing only the most mechanical responses to Uesugi’s questions. It took a while for the news to sink in.
“Is it really true?” he suddenly muttered in an interval between questions. “The poor thing was murdered.…? Why her, of all people…?”
Kiyose’s reaction struck Uesugi as too genuine to be faked.
Naohiro Kiyose was cooperative but had no information likely to help solve the case. It was understandable; the man hadn’t seen his wife for over half a year. He claimed to have been having dinner with a client in Ginza when the crime was thought to have occurred, and it didn’t take long to confirm his alibi.
The next person whom Uesugi and his partner from the Homicide Division of TMPD spoke to was Koki Kiyose, Mineko Mitsui’s only son. He was an actor with a small theatrical company.
Like his father, the young man appeared to have no idea why anyone would want to kill his mother. For his part, he hadn’t been in touch with her for nearly two years. He seemed to have no interest in his parents’ divorce and claimed to know nothing about why they’d split up.
“These days, plenty of people get divorced when they’re older,” was his blasé comment. “I was like, hey, if that’s what you want, go for it.”
Typical stupid kid, thought Uesugi to himself. They’re always so sure that they’ve grown up under their own steam, without their parents’ support or protection counting for anything. After dropping out of college, Koki Kiyose was trying to launch a career as an actor. Of course, the boy was too blind to realize that he’d only been able to develop an interest in something so flaky because of the freedom and privilege he’d enjoyed as a college student.
He’s still a child, was Uesugi’s take on Koki. He was still immature; his parents would have to keep an eye on him to make sure he stayed on track. His parents would need to make sure he was making the transition from boyhood to manhood. That was something only parents could do.
Koki was living with a waitress by the name of Ami Aoyama. The apartment they shared was registered in her name.
Why am I not surprised? thought Uesugi, sneeringly. Like I thought, this kid can’t stand on his own two feet. He just went and found someone else to mother him. If I were his dad, I’d grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him home kicking and screaming.
